Matchup Breakdown: Robert Williams vs. Arkansas
When Robert Williams of Texas A&M withdrew from the 2017 NBA Draft, he was immediately penciled into the lottery for 2018 by many draft experts. Williams averaged 11.9 points, 8.9 rebounds, and 2.5 blocks per game and displayed potential as a two-way center, showing the beginnings of an advanced face-up game and some rim protection upside. A repeat year with some refinement of his skill set seemed like it would mean that Williams would be set up to go around the 5-8 range this year.
Things haven’t worked out that way for Williams. The Aggie big man has been stuck at the end of the lottery range again on most draft boards, hovering at No. 11 on our latest big board update, because of a confluence of a lack of development and the success of 2018’s freshman big man crop. Williams has played mostly power forward next to Tyler Davis in A&M’s rotation, which has limited his ability to showcase a skill set that projects to the five at the NBA level. It’s also capped the improvement that he’s been able to show, and unveiled some questions about how successful he can be in the NBA. While he’s been productive at times this season, his performance casts doubt on whether he’s worth his lottery projection.
This Saturday’s loss to Arkansas illustrated that. Williams’s statistical performance was solid: 20 points on 10-of-13 shooting, 14 rebounds, and three blocks in 32 minutes, an efficient day by any measurement. However, the tape paints a picture of a mixed bag, which showed the positives and negatives of Williams’s game, casting doubt on his lottery value.
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As context, Williams spent most of his time on the floor matched up with Razorbacks power forwards Dustin Thomas and Gabe Osabuohien, depriving us of a more meaningful matchup with fellow 2018 NBA Draft prospect Daniel Gafford. Instead, the 6-foot-8 forwards offered an undersized matchup that Williams predictably feasted on.
Starting with the positives, it’s clear Williams has the athletic baseline to succeed in the NBA. Williams’s success is built on a strong, athletic frame and a 7-foot-4 wingspan that, when combined with great spatial quickness and vertical lift, creates a profile that gives NBA teams a lot to work with. Couple that with a high motor on the glass, and it’s easy to see a floor for Williams as an energy bench big that makes plays like this three or four times per game.
Williams has finished at an 85.6 percent rate at the rim this season, per Hoop-Math, and his combination of hands and touch is promising for the next level. Williams reminds of Bam Adebayo at Kentucky last year with his ability to catch in traffic, gather, and finish, in the halfcourt or in transition.
Williams has great fluidity of movement. He has impressive footwork in the paint, and his agility in pivots and with his spin move could indicate a post game that can be more fully exploited in the space of the NBA. That footwork also presents itself defensively with Williams’s rim protection. While he’s not as prolific this year thanks to the presence of Davis in the middle, Williams still has a 9.6 percent block rate, and his ability to track a ball-handler off the dribble and recover enough to reject him a the rim is definitely something that NBA teams will get excited about.
All of this shows that Williams has the skill set to make it in the NBA as a backup five. He has the frame and the athletic capability to survive as a dive man offensively, and his rim protection skill set, while not at a powerful level like Mohamed Bamba’s, gives confidence that an NBA team is going to be able to build it to a passable level. Williams is also a fantastic rebounder, posting a fantastic 26.7 percent defensive rebound rate, which hints at promise on the glass at the next level. Williams’s motor is one of the best in this class, which we’ve seen throughout the season.
But here is where we start to see some of those problems projected in the Arkansas tape. Williams grabbed 14 rebounds in this game, but many of them were uncontested. Williams has the mobility and strength to gobble rebounds at the NCAA level, but he isn’t a strong technical rebounder, and will often miss rotations and boxouts that cast doubt on how effective he can be as a team rebounder. There was no better example of this than one of the few times that Williams was matched up with Gafford, as Williams made an unnecessary rotation and lost the Razorbacks’ center, leading to an easy putback dunk.
While Williams is a strong individual rebounder, there’s reason to wonder if he’s a good enough team rebounder for it to matter. He struggles to hit boxouts consistently, and doesn’t seem to have the awareness to prevent opponents from beating him to rebounds. His motor is fantastic, which helps him be very successful here at the college level, but against similar athletes with similar motors in the NBA, it’s worrisome that he might not find the same success without improvement in technical skill.
Williams’s defensive skill set also needs some work, and his effectiveness there might only be limited to weakside rim protection for now. Williams is acceptable sliding on the perimeter, and his footwork on that end matches his quick feet on the offensive end. But there are issues with his stance that need correction. We showed his block of Osabuohien earlier, but watch the close-out prior to the shot.
Williams’s jumpy feet and lack of control on the closeout put him in a recovery situation right off the bat. This happens to him consistently, as he gets antsy on the defensive end, and when coupled with a somewhat lazy defensive stance this happy feet problem could lead to some difficultly closing out on fives or containing the pick-and-roll in the NBA.
This overactivity is something that breaches into other aspects of his game as well. It doesn’t happen consistently, but there have been a few times when Williams has gotten caught out of position trying to anticipate a transition opportunity. This pass was bad, but it’s unrealistic to think that Osabuohien wouldn’t have a shot at at least deflecting it, and Williams’s gamble to go after an errant pass results in an open jumper for his man.
These feel concerns aren’t at the level of what we saw early in the season with DeAndre Ayton, of course. But there are enough possessions that show awkward decision-making from Williams to make one question the ceiling of his defensive capabilities. Some of this could be solved by a full-time move to the five and a reduction in responsibility on the defensive end, which helps the projection of him as a useful third big. But to be an effective starter on a good team, it’s clear that there are defensive issues that Williams has to iron out.
He has to do this because his offensive ceiling is considerably lower. Williams has established an effective baseline here, but it’s very hard to project him becoming more than what he’s shown over the past two seasons. He has problems with most on-ball duties that you could attempt to build into his game. As a dribbler, he’s mechanical and limited if he can’t use his power, and doesn’t show on-ball skill outside of taking one power dribble to clear space, as we saw earlier. He’s also a limited passer, excelling at hi-low passing in a zone, but showing clear limitations when it comes to full-court vision, especially under pressure.
The saving grace might be his face-up game, which shows some promise despite the high probability that he’ll never have much range beyond 10-12 feet. Williams has hit just two of 28 3-point attempts over two years at A&M, and his free throw shooting (47.8 percent this year) is not promising as an indicator of any sort of shooting success. But he hit a pair of face-up jumpers in this game, and is able to leverage the threat of a strong drive to the rim into a left baseline jumper, by far his most comfortable spot on the floor.
There’s hope that, despite his reputation, he could develop a Nerlens Noel-style face-up game that allows him to bring some sort of additional offensive equity to his team, beyond just being a pick-and-roll dive man and offensive rebounder.
Williams’s performance against Arkansas does a good job of hinting at the underlying questions with Williams’s ultimate offensive ceiling. It looks like he’ll be able to provide some solid value at the NBA level, particularly if he’s able to leverage his motor and length into legitimate NBA-level secondary shot-blocking. But thanks to his offensive limitations and questionable feel and defensive polish, it’s hard to confidently say that he can be a starter in the NBA.
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He probably has a strong place as a backup given his skill set, but unlike Gafford, who shows a more refined face-up game and some legitimate passing upside, or Wendell Carter, who appears to have a much higher defensive acumen, it’s hard to see him succeeding outside of a fairly limited role at the next level. And in this draft, with so many bigs that offer a higher degree of potential to become a starter-caliber player, it’s hard to justify giving Williams the same draft slotting that he would have received last season. Williams has a shot to be a useful player in the NBA, but that lack of real starter-caliber upside that comes with his offensive limitations and defensive inconsistencies is likely to keep him from being a very high-ceiling player.